Leading the effort are two new Windows products, Windows Small Business Server
(SBS) 2008 (codenamed Cougar) and Windows Essential Business Server
(EBS) (codenamed Centro). Both were released in Release Candidate
1 form on Thursday and are available for public trial in preparation for a
November 12 launch. With these products, Microsoft is aiming to provide
big business server expertise to companies with 300 workstations or less.
The new products are not individual pieces of software, but packages of
Microsoft server software components.

Windows SBS 2008 is the first of the pair and will support up to 75
workstations. It is the successor to previous SBS products 2003 and 2000, which were modest successes. Microsoft looks to improve on these efforts with its new SBS edition, which is based on the well-received
Windows Server 2008 and includes Windows Exchange Server 2008, Windows
SharePoint Services 3.0, and 120-day trial subscriptions to new Microsoft
security products. Trials of both Forefront Security for Exchange and
Windows Live OneCare for Server are provided as well.

The standard edition of SBS will come with one server, while the premium
edition will come with both Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, with the
option of running the SQL Server outside the main SBS server.

On a more detailed level, SBS brings a number of new features to the table,
mainly focusing on the need for hassle-free security in small businesses.
Microsoft's Joel Sider, Senior Product Manager of the Windows Server Solutions
group spoke to DailyTech about the increased efforts on the security
front.

He describes, "There’s no question security is a big concern for companies
of all sizes. A big focus of both SBS and EBS is making IT setup easier,
whether it’s done by a solution provider or an IT staffer, and consolidating
most IT tasks into one place. Both Solutions provide security status and
monitoring in one place, so IT managers can easily view and address security
issues quickly and easily, whether its data protection, updates, anti-virus,
messaging security, etc.”

The second product, Windows EBS is designed to work for slightly bigger
business or "mid-sized" as Microsoft puts it. It provides
support for up to 300 workstations. The standard edition is expected to
include 3 Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard Servers and 3 Windows Exchange 2007
servers. Additionally it will come with Microsoft System Center
Essentials, Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server, and Forefront
Threat Management Gateway.

The premium version of EBS will come with SQL Server 2008 and will also have an
additional Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition. Like SBS, EBS provides
administrators with a central console, through which the other clients and
servers can be managed and protected. It also focuses on security with
many built in security-oriented features.

EBS is already showing signs of strong third-party support, a major objective
according to Microsoft. Computer Associates, Citrix Systems, Symantec
Corp. and Trend Micro have all demonstrated products which work with EBS.

Overall EBS and SBS represent the increasingly cohesive efforts by Microsoft to
capture and support the smaller size business server markets. In many
ways its growing new business, as this is a real that in the past has relied
heavily on custom solutions. Frequently small business run on proprietary
software programmed by a small contractor. Microsoft looks to take away
the uncertainty of adopting such custom solutions and offer a more tested
solution at what it feels will be a reasonable price.

Says Mr. Sider:

In small business the biggest
competition, per se, is no server infrastructure at all. Small businesses
typically have no IT staff, and are often reliant on consultants or solution
providers. We want to help small businesses – and the consultants that work
with them – understand and take advantage of all-in-one IT that will help them
be more secure, increase productivity and grow the business. The biggest
challenge for us may be creating awareness.

This holds true in the midmarket, too. Mid-sized organizations have been
historically under-served by the industry. They commonly pay the most for
software and struggle to make enterprise software work for them. They often
have very few IT professionals asked to do everything a big enterprise IT staff
does. By streamlining setup and centralizing most IT management into one view,
Essential Business Server is aimed at solving this. SBS and EBS are both priced
for small and mid-size IT budgets, too, offering savings of 30%-45% versus
buying the Solutions’ component products separately.

While EBS and SBS reaching RC1 is the biggest news out of
Microsoft, it is also continuing its Windows Home Server efforts, looking to
continue to encourage home users to adopt its server products as a means of
managing backup storage. The Windows Server Solutions group headed by Mr.
Sider is developing both updates to WHS and working on the product's eventual
successor.

Mr. Sider says a focus with WHS is PR efforts, to get people familiar and
comfortable with WHS. He states, "It is a new product category, so
our efforts will center around education and explaining how it will help
consumers protect, organize and share their growing archives of digital
media. There are online campaigns, webinars, a lot of involvement in
industry and company events, and more."

He says that hardware partner HP, which has a WHS-featuring MediaSmart Server,
just launched a new community, which should help familiarize users with the
product. He states that hardware partnership continues to grow with
Fujitsu-Siemens SCALEO and Tranquil PC offering WHS products in Europe and the
UK. Norco and Hush are also offering WHS systems. Finally, he
encourages users to check out the list
of add-ons on We Got Served, a popular community for WHS. The
add-ons offer new functionality to the product which some users may find very
handy.

With its increasingly cohesive efforts in the home and small business server
market, Microsoft seems dedicated to increasing business in these
sectors. How its efforts will be received will likely be influence by a
variety of factors, including pricing, public perception, and
ease-of-use. However, early impressions of EBS and SBS seem good and they
seem likely to find a home among many small businesses that are willing to try
something new.

The release candidates for the products are available here from
Microsoft.

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